UK court rules against Motorola’s “sync messages” patent

The phone maker has leveled the same patent at Microsoft and Apple’s iCloud.

On Friday, the High Court in London issued a ruling that said that one of Motorola’s patents covering technology to synchronize messages across several devices should be invalidated. Originally, the patent covered the synching of messages across multiple pagers, but recently Motorola has used the patent in lawsuits against Apple and Microsoft for using similar message-syncing services in iCloud and on the Xbox, respectively.

The presiding Judge Richard Arnold declared Motorola's patent invalid and said it should be revoked because the patent (which has a priority date from 1995, but was issued in 2002) contained technology that “was obvious to experts in the field at the time.” The case against Motorola was brought by Microsoft Corp., which “filed the lawsuit against Motorola Mobility in London a year ago in a pre-emptive bid to invalidate the patent before it could be sued for infringement,” as Bloomberg reported.

Microsoft and Motorola have locked horns over intellectual property in courts in the US and Germany over the past year, and Motorola is currently in the process of suing Microsoft over this very patent in Germany. If Motorola prevails in Germany, Microsoft could face damages for infringement by way of its Live Messenger and ActiveSync protocol.

Earlier this year, Motorola also sued Apple in a German court for infringing on the same pager patent that was ruled invalid today. But in that case Motorola’s patent was upheld and the court barred Apple from pushing e-mail to German iCloud and MobileMe users.

15 Reader Comments

...if the UK court also invalidates MS's patent used against android making a SMS message over 160 characters appear as one. *That* is obvious to someone in the arts!

Seeing how the UK actually is doing the job their patent office didn't with apple and samsung, everyone should just go there to get bad patents invalidated EU wide. Germany seems to bone everyone with patent trials (Moto winning over apple over the patent which just got ruled invalid and MS winning against Moto over the stupid SMS patent.

If we take this logic to its last consequences, it wouldn't surprise me if nine out every ten software patents became invalid. And maybe we should.

For a period of 12 years my employer "encouraged" me to file as many patents as possible. The diligent work of the company's lawyers made it possible for the patents to be written in a language that none of us engineers were able to understand. That's all it took for the patents to be granted. Sixteen of them. Only one of them was an original idea, a non-obvious algorithm. The rest are bullshit but you wouldn't be able to tell from the text as it is utterly incomprehensible.

Property intellectual lawyers are subverting the obviousness principle by subverting the language. If I were the patent tsar I would flat out reject any filing that could not be understood by a specialist at first glance. This alone would cut down the patent volume to a manageable size. On the other hand, if we did this, silly patents written in China and other countries would effectively neutralize the ability of software companies from recouping their R&D investment.

The only people who seem to prosper from this sorry state of affairs are intellectual property professionals.

Glad to see this invalidated, I just hope to see a much higher volume of invalidated patents, and hopefully overall discouraging the filing of frivolous and obvious patents in the first place, or at least making it unprofitable to file patents with no actual value to them.

A314InTheSky wrote:

Property intellectual lawyers are subverting the obviousness principle by subverting the language. If I were the patent tsar I would flat out reject any filing that could not be understood by a specialist at first glance. This alone would cut down the patent volume to a manageable size. On the other hand, if we did this, silly patents written in China and other countries would effectively neutralize the ability of software companies from recouping their R&D investment.

I definitely think that that would be a good step; patents in the UK are supposed to be considered by experts for their novelty, to determine if they should be granted in the first place. But as you say companies file so many patents, and they are intentionally worded in as vague and incomprehensible a way as possible that many are granted as seeming novel when in fact they're basic programming practices that have existed for years, or even decades, beforehand.

As you say though the problem is a global one; while it'd be great to see the UK becoming a bastion for sane software patents, unless the rest of the world provides similar improvements we don't really get anywhere. Particularly if the largest markets such as the US and China continue to allow obvious patent trolling. This is one area where the EU could actually prove its worth by introducing EU legislation that provides more consistent to patent offices, as currently the landscape is a bit too varied to be any real use to anyone; but if the entire EU were committed to patent reform then they may actually have the weight to be able to affect a worldwide change.

...if the UK court also invalidates MS's patent used against android making a SMS message over 160 characters appear as one. *That* is obvious to someone in the arts!

Seeing how the UK actually is doing the job their patent office didn't with apple and samsung, everyone should just go there to get bad patents invalidated EU wide. Germany seems to bone everyone with patent trials (Moto winning over apple over the patent which just got ruled invalid and MS winning against Moto over the stupid SMS patent.

I was thinking the same thing about Germany while reading this article. It really does seem to be the EU version of the US's east district of texas. Ars did an article a while back about the courtroom rules that make the east district of texas & the judge who put them in place, I'd be interested in seeing one about why germany seems to be such a magnet for patent lawsuits as every shaky patent being used as a club seems to get filed there & quickly given a favorable ruling until the UK rules otherwise & it goes up to EU

Interesting. So maybe this patent is why Google decided to stop offering ActiveSync? Looks bad for the "parent" company to be using it while "child" company is suing over it?

Google put it behind a paywall. They didn't stop using it.

Exactly. Also, given the selection of free alternatives (IMAP,CalDAV, CardDAV), Google probably felt it wasn't worth paying the license for it, unless the customers who wanted continued use paid them for it?

Exactly. Also, given the selection of free alternatives (IMAP,CalDAV, CardDAV), Google probably felt it wasn't worth paying the license for it, unless the customers who wanted continued use paid them for it?

It would be nice, for the people now paying for this functionality, that Google updates their ActiveSync implementation.

I read somewhere that they currently use a really old version - which would partially explain the less than optimal user experience.

Interesting. So maybe this patent is why Google decided to stop offering ActiveSync? Looks bad for the "parent" company to be using it while "child" company is suing over it?

Google put it behind a paywall. They didn't stop using it.

Exactly. Also, given the selection of free alternatives (IMAP,CalDAV, CardDAV), Google probably felt it wasn't worth paying the license for it, unless the customers who wanted continued use paid them for it?

Uhhh what? They're still paying for a license. The removal of it for free accounts was an attack on Windows Phone and Windows. Don't think it was anything different.

Interesting. So maybe this patent is why Google decided to stop offering ActiveSync? Looks bad for the "parent" company to be using it while "child" company is suing over it?

Google put it behind a paywall. They didn't stop using it.

Exactly. Also, given the selection of free alternatives (IMAP,CalDAV, CardDAV), Google probably felt it wasn't worth paying the license for it, unless the customers who wanted continued use paid them for it?

Uhhh what? They're still paying for a license. The removal of it for free accounts was an attack on Windows Phone and Windows. Don't think it was anything different.

So, for those of us not familiar with UK legal heirchy, is this UK court above the one in Germany, or parallel to it somehow (or is it more complicated). ie, what DIRECT impact might this ruling have on the one in Germany?

If the patent is invalidated entirely, say the London court has the jurisdiction to revike it actoss the entire EU, than i can only assume the German judge has to revisit this. If the UK court is above the german court I'm assuming as within the US, it's either automatically reversed or forces revisitation depending on the nature of the ruling. If they're paralel, can apple now appeal the german ruling to a higher EU court because there is not discrepency in interpretation by 2 equal courts on the same issue?